The 7 Aspects of Wellness

Living your best life is about one thing; balance. Life is multi-dimensional, and bringing a spirit of development, learning, and growing to each of these dimensions is important if we are to feel fulfilled and whole. By adopting a positive and proactive view of our wellness and taking responsibility for our own well-being, we can bring a holistic approach to health and wellness in which all the aspects of life work together to help us live our lives as fully as possible.

A person on the path towards emotional wellness is seeking the ability to maintain awareness and acceptance of personal feelings. In essence, someone with a healthy emotional life is in touch with who they are, how they are, and how to remain stabilized in the face of life’s problems. Stress, sadness, and anger will occur, but an emotionally healthy person understands that these feelings are normal and don’t say anything about who they are as an individual. Emotional wellness also means being able to learn from the past, plan for the future, but stay present in the moment. Dwelling on past regrets can cause depression, and thinking only of the future creates anxiety. Staying in the present with a positive attitude and a healthy self-esteem brings a sense of peace and allows us to make the most of things.

Physical wellness involves maintaining a healthy body through regular exercise and activity, healthy eating, and general self-care. Getting plenty of sleep, avoiding the negative effects of substance abuse and tobacco, and hygiene also fall under the umbrella of physical wellness. A physically healthy person is someone who strives to do all that they can to maintain their body at the optimum level of functioning both in times of sickness and good health.

Everyone is looking for a meaning to their existence. Spiritual wellness focuses on searching for the answers to these questions with a spirit of open-mindedness and non-judgment. It can include the discovery of a higher power but is not limited to this experience. Essentially, spiritual wellness means developing a set of values, beliefs, and principles that one uses to explain the meaning of their life and purpose and then striving to match one’s actions to those beliefs in all situations.

Social wellness is about the delicate balance between the needs of the individual with the needs of others. Someone who is socially healthy can achieve relative harmony in their relationships while still maintaining a sense of independence. Disagreements occur in even the healthiest of relationships; in fact, if two individuals are comfortable with being open and honest with each other at all times, differences are inevitable. Social wellness, however, involves understanding that these conflicts don’t have to destroy the friendship. Instead, they can approach the problem with a spirit of respect, both for themselves and the other person, so that disagreements can be resolved, and the relationship can grow.

If we’re working a 40-hour work week, we spend a quarter of our time at work. Occupational wellness addresses the ways in which our work life affects our total sense of wellness. It begins with self-assessment of one’s skills and values in relation to career goals so that we can promote our own satisfaction and sense of purpose. Occupational wellness is not simply about climbing the corporate ladder, gaining status or wealth. For some it involves finding a career that fits in with other lifestyle choices, supports their belief system, and allows them the freedom to explore other areas of their life while remaining financially supported. For others, occupational wellness is about finding a career that challenges and stretches them into constantly learning new things. Whatever type of career you’re searching for, the key to occupational wellness lies in learning to strike a balance between work and play, responsibility and leisure.

Environmental wellness goes beyond a simple respect for the earth and a love of nature, although that is an important part of environmental consciousness. It encompasses all external factors that affect your well-being. This includes the things, places, and even people around you and the way that your immediate environment appears as well as how you take care of these things. Keeping your environment at home or at work organized, clean, and full of beautiful things that you love helps add to your environmental wellness and your overall sense of self-care.

Intellectual wellness involves cultivating one’s critical thinking skills, the ability to distinguish between facts and opinions, and using proper logic to make good decisions without all the answers. In essence, it is about embracing all knowledge to enhance the quality of life, and this aspect of wellness is a cornerstone on which the others sit. Without intellectual wellness, we’d never really go anywhere; we would be at a standstill. There are many different ways to increase one’s knowledge, and intellectual wellness is not just about reading books or attending classes, although that definitely falls into this category. It also involves developing an inquisitive attitude about the world around us, asking questions, appreciating creative endeavors such as music and art, and generally seeking to understand how information fits into establishing a better understanding of life.